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Steel Wool Studios
Steel Wool Studios (originally known as Steel Wool Games) is the company that developed Five Nights at Freddy's VR: Help Wanted, part of Scott Cawthon's Five Nights at Freddy's franchise. The company itself was established in Oakland, California since 2013. Official Profiles * Crunchbase * Twitter * Facebook * Bloomberg * YouTube Crew Members * Andrew Dayton * Jason "Jtop" Topolski * Stewart Johnson * Evan Lampi * Phillip M. Shaw * Saul Aguilar * Nathan Spandorf * Rodney Brett * Chloe Costa * Jennifer Bach * Alex Nelson * David Weinman * Tom Myers * Lakshminarayanan Vijayaraghavan * Brett Thompson Description Founded in 2013, Steel Wool Studios brings decades of creative production experience from companies like Pixar, Intel, and TellTale Games. We are a multi-facet Games and VR production studio. We are one of the original studios that created content for the Valve VR prototype in 2015. We have shipped well reviewed VR projects: Quar Battle for Gate 18, Mars Odyssey, Bounce, Warhammer 40k Horus Heresy: Betrayal at Calth, Ready Player One: Battle for the Oasis and our upcoming Five Nights at Freddy’s VR: Help Wanted. We helped create an extensive VR installation for NASA’s Kennedy Space Center which was unveiled last Fall that incorporates complex Co-Op gameplay in a location based attraction ride. From large IP games like Warhammer, Ready Player One and Five Nights at Freddy’s, to smaller internally developed games like Bounce and Quar, to contract projects for Google and Nvidia. We are a team that can design, create and deliver.Steel Wool Studios History The founder of Steel Wool, Josh Qualtieri, who is a fan of NASA, wanted desperately to be involved in ongoing missions to explore the surface of Mars. He studied a degree in astrophysics for it, but the Martian exploration projects at NASA was then defunded. Without any other choice, he started working at Pixar who needed smart mathematicians who could deal with complex computer algorithms. After helping to create several animated films, Josh and Pixar's technical director Andrew Dayton decided to try making a game. They created the team with three Pixar artists: Sequoia Blankenship, Jonathan Hoffman and Jason Topolski. They named themselve Steel Wool Games, and developed a cute mobile title called Flyhunter Origins. As a studio founded by Pixar creatives, they instantly drew attention from the gaming industry. The co-creator of Guitar Hero, Charles Huang discovered their newly formed studio early on and decided to help them. Charles got a special invite to Valve for them, where they were given a behind-the-scene look at the company's work on the HTC Vive. They were blown away by the high level of immersion, and immediately pivoted out of the mobile games market, to instead focus on virtual reality. They changed their name to Steel Wool Studios, and successfully convinced HTC to provide them with funding and resources to create an original project for their new device by giving them an early demo for a VR game which later became Quar. Josh who is a Martian lover created a realistic computer model for the Curiosity rover and put it into the VR world. Fascinated by how amazing it looks in VR, Steel Wool started making a VR game about exploring Mars, Mars Odyssey, to fulfill Josh's childhood dream. Scott Cawthon later discovered Steel Wool's works, and he was very impressed. Eventually, Scott hired to studio to create a full VR remake of the original Five Nights at Freddy's game. Not long into development, though, they began to realize the problems with creating a direct translation of this relatively simple game, as VR was too immersive for Scott's original artwork and character models, and the flaws in designs and costumes could be easily spotted with greater visual fidelity. However, with the amazing animation skill of the team, they began to redesign a lot of art assets Scott had provided, adding additional hydraulics and machine parts.The Pixar Geniuses Behind Five Nights at Freddy's VR Help Wanted List of Games References Category:People Category:Developers